Digital Sex Crime Victims Increased Sixfold in 4 Years... Half Do Not Even Know Their Perpetrators

The number of victims of digital sex crimes, including illegal filming, has increased sixfold over the past four years. Among the victims, the proportion of teenage and women in their 20s was high, and half of them were found to have suffered harm without even knowing who the perpetrator was.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute published the "2022 Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Report" on the 20th, analyzing the patterns of harm and support status for victims of digital sex crimes supported by the Digital Sex Crime Victim Support Center (hereinafter referred to as the DiSeong Center) last year.

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Since its establishment in April 2018 under the Korea Women's Human Rights Institute affiliated with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the DiSeong Center has been providing comprehensive services for victims of digital sex crimes, including support for deleting illegal recordings, 24/7 counseling, and linkage to investigation, legal, and medical support.

According to the report, last year, 7,979 victims received services such as counseling, deletion support, and linkage to investigation, legal, and medical support at the DiSeong Center, an increase of about 14.8% compared to the previous year (6,952 victims). A total of approximately 234,000 cases of service support were provided, marking a 24.7% increase from the previous year.

This increase is attributed to proactive monitoring and deletion support for child and adolescent sexual exploitation materials and the rise in urgent cases linked by investigative agencies, such as the second Nth Room case (known as the ‘L’ sexual exploitation case). The DiSeong Center proactively deleted a total of 48,719 cases of child and adolescent sexual exploitation materials by inspecting sites where distribution was frequent.

By gender, 6,007 victims (75.3%) were female and 1,972 victims (24.7%) were male, with the number of female victims increasing approximately 1.14 times compared to the previous year (5,109 victims).

By age group, teenagers (18.0%) and people in their 20s (18.0%) accounted for 2,873 victims, or 36.0% of the total, excluding 53.3% (4,254 victims) who did not disclose their age. This indicates that digital sex crimes are occurring frequently among younger age groups who use digital devices as part of their daily lives.

Regarding the relationship between victims and perpetrators, the most common case was when the perpetrator was completely unknown, accounting for 3,942 victims (49.4%), followed by temporary relationships with 2,295 victims (28.8%), strangers with 730 victims (9.1%), and close relationships with 603 victims (7.5%).

Looking at the types of harm, among the 12,726 cases reported to the DiSeong Center, anxiety about distribution was the most common with 3,836 cases (30.1%), followed by illegal filming with 2,683 cases (21.1%) and distribution with 2,481 cases (19.5%). Distribution, distribution threats, and anxiety about distribution accounted for 67.5% of all types of harm, confirming that harm related to the distribution of illegal recordings is the most serious.

There were also 39,298 cases where personal information that could identify the victim was leaked along with illegal recordings, accounting for 18.0% of the total deletion support cases (213,602 cases). The types of leaked personal information included age in 24,445 cases (50.0%), name in 19,322 cases (39.2%), and affiliation in 4,213 cases (8.6%).

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is promoting the "Strengthening Protection and Support for Victims of Five Major Violence Types (power-based crimes, digital sex crimes, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking crimes)" as a national policy task, supporting the recovery of digital sex crime victims centered on the DiSeong Center.

To develop monitoring and deletion support technology for illegal videos, the DiSeong Center has built the "Webhard Illegal Filming Deletion Support System" (2019) and the "Harmful Website Automatic Collection System" (2021) in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). It also developed a "specific face search technology" for illegal recordings in 2022, which is currently being piloted.

Kim Hyun-sook, Minister of Gender Equality and Family, said, "Digital sex crimes are serious crimes that can be infinitely repeated and spread, so prompt deletion support is most important," adding, "We will make multifaceted efforts to guarantee the right to be forgotten for digital sex crime victims and to prevent harm."

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